Pope Francis is facing fierce blowback from traditionalists who take issue with his openness to Muslim migrants, his concern for the environment and his softer tone on divorce, cohabitation and homosexuality. Opposition has become so heated that some advisers are warning him to tread carefully to avoid a “schism” in the church. Father Thomas Weinandy, a former chief of staff for the U.S. bishops’ committee on doctrine, has accused Francis of causing “theological anarchy.” Another group of bishops has warned Francis risks spreading “a plague of divorce.” Last fall, more than 200 scholars and priests signed a letter accusing Francis of spreading heresy. “This was not something I did lightly,” Father John Rice, a parish priest in Shaftesbury in the U.K. said, claiming the pope’s liberal push has caused “much division and disagreement, and sadness and confusion in the church.” (READ MORE)

Pope Francis has invited leaders of all Christian denominations in the Middle East to join him in Italy in July to discuss how they can help bring peace to the region, the Vatican said on Wednesday. The meeting will take place on July 7 in the southern Adriatic port city of Bari, chosen because it is home to the relics of St. Nicholas, a figure venerated in both the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity. (READ MORE)

Pope Francis is firmly among the most liberal, global and politically relevant Holy Fathers in modern history. And for some Catholics, that’s become a problem. He rails against the evils of capitalist greed and climate change. In a dig at Donald Trump, he said that those who build walls to keep out immigrants are “not Christian,” and even flew Muslim Syrian refugees to safety on his papal plane. When asked about the existence of gay priests he shrugged, “who am I to judge?” He’s opened discussions about allowing married priests, permitted divorced and remarried Catholics to take Communion and said that God redeems “even the atheists.” As a result, a recent Pew survey of US Catholics found that [a majority] of Republican Catholics say Pope Francis is “too liberal” [and] a growing number of conservatives in the US and Europe worry that he may be a borderline heretic… Now, Williams says, “there is kind of an agglomeration” of conservatives that are joined in the fact they think the Pope might be a danger… (READ MORE)

Pope Francis had created a “bedlam of divergent opinions’’ and turmoil inside the Catholic Church a leading US theologian has warned. Father Thomas Weinandy, 72, is a mainstream theologian and member of the Vatican’s 30-member International Theological Commission, the church’s most senior theological advisory body. He said the Pope’s ambiguous teachings over marriage, divorce, Holy Communion and other faith and moral issues had caused confusion and division among people, priests and bishops. “By seeming to encourage doctrinal division and moral discord within the Church the present pontificate has transgressed the foundational mark of the Church — her oneness,’’ Father Weinandy told a Notre Dame University conference on Saturday. “It would appear that Pope Francis identifies himself not as the promoter of unity but as the agent of division… (READ MORE)

An increasing number of Catholics believe the Holy Father should resign, owing to the avalanche of scandals in which he’s implicated. The question then becomes who would replace him? A poll last week of Church Militant viewers showed two in five Catholics believe Pope Francis should resign. This question revolved around the sex abuse cover-up involving the Chilean Bp. Juan Barros in which Pope Francis was publically skeptical. The appointment of the disgraced former archbishop of Los Angeles as papal envoy for Scranton’s 150th-anniversary celebration didn’t sit well with Catholics either. Finally, the pope’s involvement in procuring a $25 million dollar grant for a scandal-ridden hospital in Rome is now on center stage. If the Holy Father does resign, certain liberal bishops who helped elect Pope Francis to the papacy have already said they want the current secretary of state Cdl. Pietro Parolin (whose name can be translated Petrus Romanus from the final line of the Prophecy of the Popes) to replace him. (READ MORE)

But what if Francis is not Petrus Romanus, the final pope of Malachy’s prophecy? What if that dark Superforce (Catholic Freemasons) that Malachi Martin warned about is using Francis and his left-leaning theology to play a complex end-times game aimed at manipulating and reconfiguring Rome into a Socialist-Marxist instrument for the real Final Pope’s arrival? What if the same George Soros-globalist one-worlders who have teamed up against Trump are working with Francis to lay the groundwork for Antichrist’s global order ala the book of Revelation? (READ MORE)